[quote author=“klatu”]
History, that final of all judges has discarded uncountable examples into its own dustbin of oblivion and progress has often required the uncomfortable business of discarding baseless reason and institution. That process, the bloody chore of prying men loose form the myths they have created about themselves and forthemselves.

This personification of History is pretty much worthless because it can be used relatively by each opposing side in any debate.

However, even if you took this statement at face value, it is pretty false. Even if the great Greek civilisation with it’s emphasis on logic and reason did not survive, the ideas that prevailed in that society did survive and we are applying and debating those ideas with as much fervour today than in those days of the Greeks.

I guess the same thing can be said of religion as well. Although many religions have been discarded on the wayside the core concepts of religion such as believing in the unseen remains intact with humans throughout the ages.

Yet nothing that Klatu’s has provided in support of his NEW RELIGION suggest that this religion is going to escape the “dustbin of history”. All we have is his word that this is so.

Now I don’t want to sound flippant but even some of those great ancient religions that eventually did get discarded had much more going for it than some obscure promise by an individual that what he states is true with a scripture that reflects many of those ancient scriptures that HAS GOT DISCARDED. My impression is that Klatu is trying to “clothe an old emperor in new clothes” in an age when all reasonable people have stopped believing that the emperor is supreme.”

It is always interesting to see the reponses people make to the news of something so profound and new in the field of religion. We all come to this news with a set of ideas and predjudices we have accumulated via our individual cultural experiences, which include belief or non belief and every increment in between. Especially when the news commands a personal, critical self-scrutiny that may be most uncomfortable.

For an athiest it is mixed. Contradicting assumptions of modernism and science, while at the same time confirming the underlying opinion that existing religious institutions and claims are fraudulent. But maybe with a small appreciation that this teaching comforms to a conception of knowledge they are familiar with. For the professional or active lay religious the response can only be defensive. For a ‘christian’ confronting the fact that their particular ‘theology’ has lead only to illusion will take some adjustment. For the Jew, a development that might throw the whole zionist project off the rails will be down right frightening. Even a Muslim won’t be able to escape having to measure there own ideas of God against a new reality that all three monotheisms presumed, within their traditions, to be impossible.

No one likes to have their long and strongly held illusions debunked and exposed, but the necessity for change is the over riding imperative. Having been a very lapsed catholic/agnostic and an activist working for change when I heard of this news, I didn’t have any intellectual or spiritual baggage to stop or hold me back from first examining the teaching, being married, discussing the implications with my partner and then going on to test and confirm the claims of truth.

If I hadn’t received encouraging private messages from other members of the CFI forum, but who didn’t want to get involved with what some members were trying to turn into a unconstructive slanging match, I doubt I would have bothered to stay in this discussion, for discussion has its limits. It is the character of this revelation that nothing can be resolved by simple discussion or any system of human logic, only by faith in action, testing for the reality of something outside ‘tradition’ and the potential of natural reason and human nature itself. I have provided more than enough material to get any sincere person started.

So I will wish those well with their new spiritual journey who have contacted me privately, and leave those others to there own confusion, to stand behind a status quo that is crumbling all around them.

I also thank the owners of CFI forums for the opportunity to have this discussion.

[quote author=“klatu”]If I hadn’t received encouraging private messages from other members of the CFI forum, but who didn’t want to get involved with what some members were trying to turn into a unconstructive slanging match, I doubt I would have bothered to stay in this discussion, for discussion has its limits.

Hm. I would hope that if there are in fact such people they would step out of the shadows and help shed some light on the subject. So far what we have been presented is very far from being ‘profound and new’.

[quote author=“klatu”]I also thank the owners of CFI forums for the opportunity to have this discussion.